Sociology & Criminology

Programs

Courses

CRM 1001: Introduction to Criminology

Credits 3

The nature and extent of crime; the factors related to criminal behavior; theories of the treatment and control of offenders; crime prevention programs.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3001: Justice and Society

Credits 3

This course presents an overview of the criminal justice system. It focuses on the nature, operation and critical issues of law enforcement, the courts and corrections.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3100: Juvenile Delinquency

Credits 3

Meaning and scope of delinquency; delinquency theories; role of social institutions and social agencies; prevention, control, and treatment programs.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2020
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3200: Police & Society

Credits 3

Police are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system - their decisions and actions can have enormous consequences for people's lives. But these decisions are not made mechanically by a simple application of criminal statutes. Rather police are empowered with discretion. The course will examine the police role in contemporary society, the nature of police discretion, and how discretion is exercised in the handling of individual cases.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Fall 2020, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3300: Criminal Courts

Credits 3

This is a comprehensive introduction to the U.S. criminal court system. It provides an overview of the stages of the criminal process. It examines critical issues surrounding each stage and the roles of the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3330: Sociology of Law

Credits 3

The meaning, origin and impact of law viewed from several sociological perspectives; the law in action and the social context of legal professions.

Last Offered
Fall 2021, Fall 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3350: The Supreme Court

Credits 3

This course examines the factors which influence the decision to charge a person with a crime, public policy considerations relating to restraints on law enforcement and the property and wisdom of some established rules of law. Supreme Court decisions affecting the criminal process will be discussed.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3400: Punishment and Society

Credits 3

Survey of the historical and contemporary treatment of convicted offenders; analysis of the prison social system; analysis of the theory, practice and function of correctional programs.

Last Offered
Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3600: Wrongful Convictions

Credits 3

Analyzes systemic problems in criminal legal system that give rise to wrongful convictions. Topics include false confessions, unreliable eyewitness identifications, law enforcement corruption/misconduct, informants, flawed coverage, and ineffective assistance of counsel.

CRM 3700: White Collar Crime

Credits 3

White collar crimes are committed by professionals for the benefit of individuals or organizations. This course examines the nature and magnitude (cost in dollars and lives) of white collar crime. Sociological theories explaining the commission of """crime in the suites"""" and society's response will be discussed."

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2019
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3850: Drugs and Society

Credits 3

History of drug use and drug laws; relationship between drug use and crime; drug offenses and the criminal justice system; treatment and prevention issues.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Effective Term
201420

CRM 3900: Race, Crime, and Justice

Credits 3

Racial and ethnic disparities in crime and justice both reflect and contribute to social injustice. Theories and research provide insight about individual biases and structural racism that are evident in criminal justice practices, policies, and institutions.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Effective Term
202220

CRM 4000: Special Top In Criminology

Credits 3

This course investigates special topics or emerging issues within criminology. Topics are selected for their importance or the expertise of the instructor.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
201420

CRM 4300: Crime/Delinquency Prevention

Credits 3

Evidenced-based analysis of strategies to prevent/reduce crime and delinquency. Topics include theory and evaluation research; strategies with schools, early childhood, parenting, peers and gangs, juvenile substance use; policies in juvenile, policing, corrections; and implementation science and social justice.

CRM 4400: Queer Criminology

Credits 3

Overview of field of queer criminology, a subdiscipline of criminology that focuses on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people within the criminal legal system (e.g.,) as victims, perpetrators, and subjects of state control), and on employing queer methodological approaches and perspectives.

CRM 5100: Criminological Theory

Credits 3

The nature of criminological theory and the major theoretical developments that have shaped criminology.

Prerequisites

CRM 1001 or CRJ 3000

Prerequisite Courses
Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
201420

SOC 1500: Social Problems

Credits 3

Significant problems of American society; the sociocultural basis of social problems, the conditions facilitating their incidence, and approaches to therapeutic intervention.

Last Offered
Spring 2023, Summer 2022, Spring 2022, Summer 2021
Effective Term
200930

SOC 2200: Sociology of Deviance

Credits 3

A sociological examination of rule-breaking behavior; causal theories of deviance; types of deviance and their distribution in contemporary society.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
199520

SOC 2300: Sociology of the Family

Credits 3

Institutional organization of mate selection, courtship, and marriage relationships in American society; family relationships and functions; family disorganization and change.

Last Offered
Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Effective Term
199520

SOC 2400: Sociology of Social Work

Credits 3

History and development of social welfare; basic issues in social welfare planning and administration. The major methods of social work, practice; social casework, group work and community organization, in such areas as child welfare, family service and counseling, probation and corrections.

Last Offered
Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Fall 2019
Effective Term
199520

SOC 3300: Sociology of Law

Credits 3

The meaning, origin, and impact of law viewed from several sociological perspectives; the law in action and the social context of legal professions.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2021
Effective Term
200020

SOC 3400: Health, Medicine & Society

Credits 3

This course explores the social dimensions of health, disease and illness, focusing especially on the social determinants of disease, the social experience of illness, and the role and meaning of medicine and public health in modern U.S. society. The class examines how we define health problems and their solutions, and it considers the ways in which factors such as race, gender and class, and social connections affect health.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
202030

SOC 3450: Soc of Mental Health & Illness

Credits 3

Examination of mental health and illness in social and historical context; different frameworks for understanding mental illness (e.g. psychological, biomedical, and sociological); social meanings, definitions, and determinants of mental illness; approaches to treatment; and the various ways in which the mentally ill (and/or those labelled as mentally ill) have been marginalized in society.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Effective Term
202210

SOC 3500: Sociology of Gender

Credits 3

Exploration of gender as a social construct shaped by social structures and cultural norms; focus on intersections of gender with other axes of inequality including race/ethnicity, social class, sexuality, and citizenship.

Last Offered
Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Effective Term
200830

SOC 3600: Sociology of Race & Racism

Credits 3

Development of race and ethnic relationships in America; the impact of power-conflict relations on race and ethnic patterns; particular attention given to development from early 1950's to present.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
202030

SOC 3700: Urban Sociology

Credits 3

The nature of the city; history of urban settlement; urban form; institutions, organizational structures and processes; major problems of living in urban America.

Last Offered
Fall 2024, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
Effective Term
199520

SOC 3800: Social Movements

Credits 3

The sociological study of social movements, including mobilization, participation, tactics, goals and ideology; the social contexts in which movements arise and develop; the nature and influence of historical and contemporary movements and activism.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
201810

SOC 4000: Special Topics

Credits 3

Topics addressing special or emerging interests, chosen for their current importance and the specific expertise of an instructor.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Effective Term
199520

SOC 4100: Sociology of Migration

Credits 3

Explores systems of inequality in US through lens of international migration. Examines how race/ethnicity, class, gender, age, and citizenship status shape experience of migrants and non-migrants. Organized around central debates such as incorporation, legal status, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and transnationalism.

Last Offered
Fall 2003, Summer 2003, Spring 2003, Fall 2002

SOC 4200: Sports and Society

Credits 3

Sports as both a unifying and divisive social force. The corporatization and commodification of organized sports.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Effective Term
201030

SOC 4500: Critical Race Theory

Credits 3

Theoretical framework challenging dominant understandings of race and law. Examines race, racism, systems of inequality through CRT lens; uses CRT as epistemological and empirically grounded theoretical frame; examines how norms of legal profession and areas of law facilitate racial oppression.

SOC 5050: Soc Theory & Public Policy

Credits 3

Influence of sociological ideas on social policies. Students will be expected to design a theoretically driven empirical study which impacts on some public policy.

Prerequisites

SOC 1000

Prerequisite Courses
Last Offered
Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Effective Term
199930

SOC 5400: Research Methods SocialScience

Credits 3

The development of real-world research skills through the application of social scientific methods and statistics. Special emphasis is given to sampling, measurement, applied statistics, data management and evaluative research.

Last Offered
Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Effective Term
199520

SOC 6500: Seminar

Credits 3

Advanced course for seniors focusing on particular substantive area; topics rotate.

Prerequisites

(SOC 5300 and SOC 5400) and (SOC 5000 or SOC 5050 or SOC 5100)

Prerequisite Courses
Last Offered
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Effective Term
199120